


On the Banks of the Heavenly River

by lily_winterwood



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artists, Alternate Universe - Historical, Diary/Journal, Epistolary, Film History, M/M, Meiji Era, Meiji Restoration, Mythological References, Tanabata
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 20:09:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17494505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_winterwood/pseuds/lily_winterwood
Summary: But Yuuri disregards that. He bends the norms, he opens himself up, and I can only return in kind. I want to know everything there is to know about him.Glimpses into the diaries of society painter Viktor Nikiforov and uki-e artist Yuuri Katsuki, at the turn of the century.A piece forBorn to Make (Art) History, done in collaboration withAlice.





	On the Banks of the Heavenly River

**10 June 1899**

I have finally arrived in Fukuoka. The streets are crowded, lively — truly a modern city blossoming out of its old dirt roads and paper houses. They say in Europe that Japan is a fairy land, full of little doll-like people and places, but it is so much more than that, and I wonder what Yura would have to say if he ever set foot here.

And to think the good people of Japan have scarcely had thirty years to bring their country out of their bucolic isolation! I am astounded at how rapid the pace of technology seems to be in this country, how hardworking the industries must be to have so much modern infrastructure in place in an eighth of the time it would have taken for Saint Petersburg to do the same.

But I am not here to marvel at the rapid development of this small Eastern island. The road to the Marquess Okukawa’s house in Fukuoka has been long and strenuous, spanning oceans and railways and rickshaws in the hot summer air. I am stifled and dirty, but I am here, and the work begins tomorrow once I have gotten my bearings.

The Marquess’s house is in the Japanese style, but she tells me she has a separate residence in Tokyo which is finishing its construction by the end of the summer, coinciding with the reconvening of the Imperial Diet. So this time is the best for my work, as she will be scarce once the autumn sets in.

The Marquess is hosting a family friend who usually lives in one of the outlying towns. He is a recent graduate of Oxford, and he was absent at supper, having sequestered himself in his room with his books and sketches. I was told he once studied for a time with the Italian painter Cialdini, but lacks the confidence to seek any recognition for his artwork. Instead he trains to be a bureaucrat, fading into the army of young Japanese scholars destined to serve Emperor and country.

So I have yet to meet the Marquess’s friend, but I am assured I will at some time. My nerves are all aflutter at the thought of meeting a fellow artist.

* * *

**明治32年06月22日**

Another letter from Phichit, talking at length about production on the _King and the Skater_. He thinks he’ll have it in time for the Parisian _Exposition Universelle_ next year, and even if he didn’t, I’ve every reason to suspect the exhibition authorities would try to delay the opening of the fair itself if only to have exclusive showing rights to Prince Chulanont of Siam’s first film. To have one’s art displayed for the world! I wish I had that courage.

Minako’s guest is here, too, having just arrived in Fukuoka this afternoon. I told her I was studying for the civil service exam to excuse myself from going to supper tonight, but the fact of the matter is that I know who her guest is. Or rather, I have loved his work long before he showed up on Minako’s doorstep.

The first painting of his that I had seen was in a salon in Saint Petersburg, at the end of a long travel through the Continent with Phichit. He had made it a point to visit every major art gallery and museum in the cities we stopped in, with occasional deviations into distracting little shops or studios — which, of course, drove his valet mad — and this salon had been one such diversion. The woman who hosted the salon spoke of the painter like a wayward son, tutting severely over her tea but still according his work the places of honour. And those paintings! Halfway between reality and dreams, between John Singer Sargent and Claude Monet. Viktor Ilych Nikiforov is, for all intents and purposes, a society painter, but he captures movements and fleeting impressions with his brush that give his portraits a very different feel from those of his peers.

And Minako is his new patron.

* * *

**25 June 1899**

Have you ever heard the story of the princess and the cowherd? The princess was a very diligent worker, weaving tapestries of immense beauty for the heavenly emperor. But he saw that she was melancholy, since all of that hard work meant she would never find the time to meet someone and fall in love. And so, the emperor introduced her to a cowherd who lived on the other side of the Milky Way, and it was love at first sight.

Tonight was the night of a festival dedicated to them. They were separated because their love led them to distraction, but the princess’s tears moved the emperor to grant them one night each year where they meet across the Milky Way on a bridge of magpies. I have heard other versions of this tale, but somehow this one resonates with me a little more.

My guide to the festival was Minako’s family friend, and his eyes are like starlight.

His name is Yuuri — Yura will probably not appreciate that — and he has indeed studied Western law and literature at Oxford with the ultimate goal of becoming a government worker, but his true heart lies in beauty and art. He mentioned that he had seen my paintings in Saint Petersburg, and that they were dreamlike. His English is better than mine, words rolling off his tongue like water.

I told him I have barely even picked up the charcoal yet, and he’d think differently of me once I started working. He laughed, and my heart felt like it was dancing.

Yuuri took me through all the festivities tonight, and helped me write my wishes for the boughs of bamboo hung about the shrine. Stepping through the gates of this shrine felt like a step back into simpler times, a breath of tranquility amid the tide of progress. We tried so many interesting foods in the stalls surrounding the shrine, and I bought a teacup of shell-coloured porcelain — a local specialty — so that whenever I drink from it, I will remember the summer warmth of Yuuri’s eyes and how perfectly his hands fit in mine.  

* * *

**明治32年07月07日**

Tonight I danced with Viktor. I hadn’t meant to, but the music was so lively, and all the other people were dancing. I hope he didn’t take it as me being too forward. After all, Minako told me to make sure he had a good time, and dancing generally entails having a good time, right? He seemed to play along with it well enough, in any case, and he took my blundering admiration for his art with grace.

This morning was the first time I met him face-to-face, and I hadn’t realised he was so young. I knew his hair was silver, which usually brings to mind the doting old men who visit my father on the weekends, but Viktor is far from that stage in his life. No, he is in the bloom of youth, blue eyes bright and keen like sunlight on sea-glass. I think my heart stumbled a little upon seeing him, and I hope that wasn’t too obvious.

I took him to the Tanabata festival at the shrine tonight. It was funny to see him handle the calligraphy brush to write his wish, as he clearly wanted to hold it like one of his paintbrushes instead. We went through the stalls after, watched a local kabuki reenactment of the legend of Orihime and Hikoboshi, and then danced.

Viktor bought a couple curios to take home with him after, and was quiet during most of the walk back to Minako’s. He’d earned several strange looks tonight, obviously looking foreign with his silver hair and somber Western suit, but I couldn’t help but think he couldn’t have possibly looked more handsome than when the light of the moon shimmered across his cheekbones, and the stars seemed to dance in his smile.

He kissed my hand at my door. It has been hours now, and I can still feel his lips against my skin.

* * *

**30 June 1899**

Painting the Marquess Okukawa is a slow and frustrating matter when there are plenty of photographs of her already available. Her spirit eludes capture: she is grace and poise, smiling demurely in all of her pictures, but she is also fire and ambition, constantly answering calls from Tokyo and stopping my sketches in order to draft strongly-worded wires to her colleagues on the Diet.

Yuuri sits with me when I sketch, an observant shadow behind my easel. I have asked for him to perhaps change the angle where he sits, but no matter where he is I still feel his eyes on me, feel the warmth of his breath against my nape. My patroness may be the first I must impress, but Yuuri often seems to squeak by her into my thoughts, blocking out all else.

It is difficult to draw the Marquess’s eyes when the pair you remember is so vastly different.

* * *

**明治32年07月15日**

Viktor asked me about the time I studied with Cialdini at Oxford. Phichit and I had actually met under his tutelage, though Phichit would later move to film. His films still have an artist’s composition to them, though.

Viktor has already done countless studies of Minako. He has posed her in almost every possible way in and around the chaise she has set up in this parlour, and both of them are now clearly desperate to find the right one. When she goes to take her calls and draft her wires, he follows her with a notebook, shedding sketches in his wake. He briefly flirted with the idea of capturing her at work, but she said she didn’t want to hold a pen at the same angle for a month. But she decided to bring her letters back to the chaise by his easel anyway, so that he can study her hands as she writes her replies.

As Viktor studies her, so will I study Viktor, trying to dredge up distant lessons from Cialdini stuffed into his ratty old studio. He used to sit us on the balcony for hours, trying to get us to paint the comings and goings of his neighbours. I suppose I’ve gotten quite good at drawing and observing, though Viktor will never see the fruits of my patience.

He is right about something, though: seeing him at work has opened my eyes to the way his hair falls in his eyes, and the deft strokes of his brush.

* * *

**5 July 1899**

Yuuri, dreadful creature that he is, insists on collecting all of the sketches I have discarded of the Marquess, saying that they are worth keeping even if the point of discarding means I have no use for them anymore. I intend to find them again and burn them when he is not looking.

Minako has been wondering if perhaps this year she should just get her photo taken again, and leave me to draw the Japanese countryside and peasants instead. I told her that perhaps we should pack a picnic for the beach instead, and see if any enlightenment will come to us out of the waves there, but she excused herself with work and offered Yuuri as my companion once more. He was willing, and that made the frustration melt for a while.

Yuuri and I talked of our dogs at the beach today. I told him my studio in Saint Petersburg is filled with paintings of Makkachin. He laughed and admitted he had several sketches of his own dog, Vicchan. “Short for Victoria, of course,” he added. “God save her.”

I had almost forgotten the Japanese are on better terms with the English than with us. The Marquess treats me with the utmost civility and respect, when we are not at odds about poses and lighting, and Yuuri has also been kind. The rest of the household is gracious but silent, keeping mostly to themselves, as are the people in Fukuoka that I meet. They view me like they view all other foreigners — a strange curio from a stranger outside world, not to be hurt yet also not to be trusted. Russians are not yet subject to Japanese laws, which certainly does not encourage any interaction closer than across a simple wooden stall.

But Yuuri disregards that. He bends the norms, he opens himself up, and I can only return in kind. I want to know everything there is to know about him. I want to memorise the contours of his face beneath my hands, like I am a sculptor and he is my greatest work of art. I want to drown myself in his honeyed eyes, and taste the salt of the sea on his lips.

I only have until I finish Minako’s portrait to be with him, so I must make every day count.

* * *

**明治32年07月19日**

A storm is brewing in China, Phichit says. He has travelled through the country for his production, but travel through that country is tricky when other nations have segmented the land for their own. I can almost smell the opium smoke permeating the paper on which his letter is written.

There’s a different storm blowing at the screens of my room at the family ryokan in Hasetsu, and a third that has seized my heart with no intent of letting up. I’ve brought Viktor down here to show him the Kyosai murals painted on the walls of the old banquet room, and he in turn has suggested I spend the night in the room with him. I declined, of course, but part of me wishes I hadn’t.

It wouldn’t be my first time. I don’t imagine it would have been Viktor’s, either. But what a world it would be, if I could take back my lips from every other kiss, my hands from every other caress, my body from every other encounter so that I might give myself purely and freely to Viktor alone. I want to discover myself again with him. I want to fall asleep to the sound of the summer thunderstorm, and wake up to the sunshine of his smile.

Kyosai-sensei once painted on our walls a pack of dogs, scampering on the ice out towards the half-frozen sea, its inky waves undulating with each brushstroke. Viktor dreams under their watchful gaze, and tonight I will dream of the circle of his arms.

* * *

**9 July 1899**

The summer thunderstorms are frightful, but they break the late summer humidity best. I have gotten to know some of the Marquess’s household better, especially the housekeeper, Yuuko. She is a childhood friend of Yuuri’s, and she has three wonderful little daughters who keep her busy when she’s not tending to the Marquess’s daily affairs.

Gosha sent me a letter the other day, telling me I should return to Saint Petersburg before violence in Manchuria renders Japan completely hostile to Russia. I suppose he would know best, as an assistant to the Russian Minister in Peking, but while the Marquess’s painting remains unfinished, I, too, remain in Japan.

I spend my days down at the beach, painting the Marquess. When she is called away to meetings and dinners, Yuuko takes her place. Yuuri entertains her daughters while I paint, helping them catch crabs and build sand castles. I remember those afternoons best, having captured them with my mind’s eye for a rainy day.

A storm is slowly gathering, but my heart is still sunny yet. Once it has passed, I will take my easel down to the beach and try to recapture the light.

* * *

**明治32年07月25日**

There are talks of the implications of Russia completing her Trans-Siberian Railway. Minako’s parlour is full of visiting ministers and quiet whispers barely audible through the paper walls, and I have been listening in whilst working on my own artistic endeavours. Ukiyo-e is difficult enough without adding in Western concepts of perspective, but I want to make a good impression, so to speak.

Viktor judiciously does not show his face when Minako has guests, as foreigners — especially the ones from other Legations — distrust one another almost implicitly. Instead, he flees to the beach, citing a need to work on his painting — though I can’t imagine what sort of painting one can do by moonlight and lamps! But it’s clear given the present situation in Manchuria that Minako commissioning a Russian painter is considered foolish at best and dangerous at worst.

Viktor cares nothing of politics, and it hurts a little to see others assume that he does — that his very presence here is some sinister Russian cultural ploy. The thought of him painting state secrets into the corners of his portrait of Minako is laughable.

* * *

**18 July 1899**

I walk with Yuuri almost every day, filling the air with easy conversation. We talk of his studies, his obligatory socialising, his artwork. I snuck a glance at his sketchbook while he was distracted by Vicchan, and found the most exquisite renderings of my face that I had ever seen.

Yuuri hid the sketches the instant he caught me peeking, but I admit that only piqued my curiosity. I want to know him, to discover him like he discovered me in Lilia’s salon all those summers ago. Still, his silence was as telling as his speech, long golden moments filled with ardent longing and wistful affection. I can feel his gaze on me even long after we parted ways for the evening, and all I can think of now is the touch of his hand against my wrist, the shine of his eyes in starlight.

If it is possible to die from longing, I must set my affairs in order. At this rate, I doubt I will last the summer.

* * *

**明治32年08月02日**

We are in Tokyo for a little while, partly as a break for Viktor, partly for Minako to consult on the construction of her house and to visit the British Minister before he departs for the country.

The journey so far has been long and tedious, spanning boats and jirinksha and railways. We were all dusty and sweaty by the time we reached the hotel, and Minako could only spare herself a change from her kimono into Western dress to meet the Minister. Viktor and I have gone to amuse ourselves instead, finding little shops and stalls to inspect. Viktor picked up more curios, including a small enamel bowl with a dog brushed into the lacquer.

It never fails to amaze me how much faster Tokyo’s modernity progresses relative to Fukuoka. Fukuoka is still in its early stages, while Tokyo is clearly at the forefront, trying on all of the new inventions and ideas before passing them down to her sisters. I wondered if Viktor will prefer to stay here, where there are so many more foreigners, but he laughed at that and said he didn’t want to go anywhere without me. I don’t know if he meant he wouldn’t want to brave Tokyo by himself, or if he really would rather stay by my side.

* * *

**25 July 1899**

On our last night in Tokyo, Yuuri took me dancing.

It was at a party held at the French Legation, and an old friend of mine was there with his camera to capture the entire affair. Christophe and I caught up — he had just finished wrapping film work on a project produced by a Prince of Siam. Yuuri, too, perked at the name of Prince Chulanont, and said he was a friend from Oxford.

Yuuri was resplendent in his solemn blue kimono and jacket, and we must have cut a strange figure across the ballroom because of the contrast in our outfits, but if anyone had objections to us dancing they kept it to themselves. As it always does, time vanished the instant we began to dance, flying invisibly past us with each turn around the ballroom. Afterwards, we took to the garden, amusing ourselves amid trellises laden with late wisteria and early rosebuds. We only took one another’s hands, yet the touch felt clandestine, forbidden somehow — given recent tensions, Yuuri expressing any form of interest in me could be viewed as treason in the eyes of his country. Yet he dared to brush his fingers to mine, to lean his head on my shoulder and marvel at the beauty of the moon.

I once heard that sharing in the beauty of nature is a gesture of love in Japan. I now know such moments are more intimate than any declaration I could ever think of.

* * *

**明治32年08月14日**

Viktor, who paints _alla prima_ , is finished with his portrait. Minako’s been called away, so I’m the first to see the finished work, and all I can say is that it is unlike anything he’s ever done before. The calm colours of the sea, the juxtaposition of smooth skin against choppy waves. It’s an abstract seascape against a perfectly rendered Minako, and it is undeniably beautiful, like fog rolling across a mountain peak, like golden seashell sunsets against a sea-cliff.

Barring her approval, the painting is now done, and just in time, too, with all the stories of rising Russo-Japanese tensions in Tokyo. Manchuria, Korea, the railways — everything is in another country that is neither of ours’, and yet the actions of other people still come back to haunt us. Viktor is no longer obliged to stay, and I am no longer obliged to entertain him — but I want to, and I want him to. I want him to stay.

I took him to my room and showed him my sketches. Studies of him painting, reading, sketching Minako from his easel — it’s not much, but it lets him know how much I’ve longed for him, how many times my charcoal danced across the paper with the wistful thought of my fingers following suit someday. He found drafts of my woodblock prints, too, his eyes reverent as his fingers traced the lines.

For a brief, burning moment I thought he would kiss me in the middle of the room, in the early twilight with my sketches scattered across the tatami. But as he traced his thumb across my lips with longing etched in every line of his face, there came a knock at his door to herald the arrival of supper.

I have never hated a knock — or myself — more in that moment.

* * *

**4 August 1899**

There is nothing in the world quite as lovely as fireflies, except perhaps the sweetness of Yuuri’s kiss.

Tonight, Yuuri took me to a night market where we met an old man selling little cages full of fireflies. I have never seen them before in Russia, so I was immediately taken by these, as to me they seemed like the wayward children of the stars above.

I asked how much they were, and Yuuri conversed with the seller before telling me they were all two rin each. Two rin — not even the value of a kopek — for a little star-creature? Naturally I bought them all, every last one of them, and Yuuri helped me carry the cage back to the Marquess’s back garden, where I promptly set them free.

A swarm of fireflies dancing together into the night is like witnessing the creation of the Milky Way. How the little creatures struggled to fly high enough to be reunited with their siblings in the stars! We watched them together, his fingers tight against mine, sending them off with waves and smiles, before Yuuri turned to me and tilted his head to the side, almost luminescent himself.

There is only ever one way: forward. And forward I went, into his arms. His lips taste of sake, of the street food from the night market. Even as I look at the painting of the Marquess in the parlour just outside my room — now finished, awaiting her approval— all I can think of is Yuuri, and how the princess forgot her duties to the emperor the instant she fell in love.

* * *

**明治32年08月24日**

Even in Fukuoka the agitation about Russian troops in Manchuria is boiling to a breaking point. Viktor was almost accosted by a young man wielding a swordstick this morning, and I had to intercede and tell the man to leave.

The incident, though quickly averted, has reminded Viktor that his time in Japan is swiftly ending, and that it’d be prudent to find himself some way to return to Russia. From the first moment I heard he was here, I’d known we would someday part. But even with that knowledge, my mind has not stopped screaming like a petulant child over the concept of having to say goodbye.

I’ve spent so much of my life not knowing that Viktor’s eyes crinkle when he laughs, not knowing of the dimples at the base of his spine or the Milky Way of freckles across his back. And yet now that I do know, I find it hard to part with each detail, as if each is a poem in a book I am hesitant to place back on the shelf. Did Hikoboshi ever feel this, I wonder, lying in the shadow of the magpies next to his beloved, knowing come the sunrise they must step across the bridge of birds and wait another year more?

It’s not permanent. But my heart thinks that it must be.

* * *

**21 August 1899**

I must leave in a week’s time; passage is reserved for me on the _Victory_ from Nagasaki back to Saint Petersburg. My supplies are packed, but my heart spills out of my trunk every time I try to shut it back in once more.

It is unfair, to have to leave Yuuri just when I have discovered the taste of his kisses, the texture of his skin.

My sorrow is too great a burden to bear alone, but I must do it anyway.

* * *

**明治32年09月10日**

Viktor kissed me in lieu of words before he ascended the gangplank onto the _Victory_. I promised him I would call once in a while, and write him as many letters as I can. He promised me the same, pressing something metal into my hand. Only after the ship’s departure did I open my hand to see it: a simple ring, inlaid with half of a snowflake. A promise, spun out across the world.

In a couple of days, I must depart for Tokyo to help Minako, and to put down the roots of my own civil service connections amongst her friends. But what had only begun with half of my heart now has none of it.

In the meantime, I will begin my first letter to Viktor. I wonder if Orihime ever wove her feelings into letters shot across the stars to her beloved.

* * *

**24 June 1900**

I saw a magpie this morning, collecting its baubles in its nest outside the window of my hotel room. It knocked a snail shell against the wood, evidently testing its hardiness as a trophy. So strange that a bird so reviled as a thief and a predator in the West can be so welcomed with open arms in the East! I imagine it must be the stories they tell, for it was a bridge of magpies that brought the princess to her cowherd, and it is the lone one here that heralded me back into Yuuri’s arms.

It has been a year of letters, a year of long-distance calls and telegrams and worries that world politics will stop us from talking to one another. In the time since, China has rebelled against the knives that have carved her, our troops in Manchuria have more than doubled, and Japan is on its way to an alliance with the English.

But none of that mattered tonight in this grand Parisian exhibition hall, with Yuuri’s hand in mine as we watched Prince Chulanont’s film of a king and a skater gliding across the screen. We could hear the sounds of their skates and the words they spoke to one another, as if we were there at the side of the rink, a fly on the wall in an intimate moment.

Afterwards we moved on to another pavillion in this _Exhibition Universelle_ , this small global village plopped in the heart of Paris. We saw panoramic films recreating a train ride along the Trans-Siberian Railway, the world’s largest telescope, elegant and exciting new building styles bursting with flowers and scrollwork. We rode to the top of the tallest Ferris wheel in the world, watching as the city fell away below our feet.

But I will remember best the Japanese art exhibition, where amid the paintings and prints of the great masters, a small diptych of two dancers — one in Western clothing, one in Japanese — hung with pride. I had seen these poses before in sketches scattered across the floor in Yuuri’s room, and now they are memories rendered alive in vibrant colour.

I have no further interest in writing tonight, as Yuuri and I are only briefly reunited for this week while he attends to the Marquess’s business affairs in Paris. He lies asleep beside me now, ebony curls splashed across the hotel linens. Someday they will find themselves on my pillow, in the home we might build together.

The world may be tumultuous, but Yuuri is as constant to me as the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was inspired by the letters of [Mary Crawford Fraser](https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Diplomatist_s_Wife_in_Japan.html?id=12VKAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button) and the diaries of [Ernest Satow](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/43541), two contemporary foreign observers of Meiji-era Japan. I've been fascinated by the Meiji Restoration for quite some time, and jumped at the chance to do a piece about it! 
> 
> This piece was also done in collaboration with [Alice](http://babypears.tumblr.com/), whose amazing illustration can be seen in full [here](http://babypears.tumblr.com/post/182191847858/ukiyo-e-inspired-pieces-for-the). The reference for the illustration is [City Dance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_in_the_City) and [Country Dance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_in_the_Country) by Auguste Renoir.
> 
>  **Additional references and notes:**  
>  Differences in dates: Viktor's journal is written to the Julian calendar, while Yuuri's is to the Gregorian. Additionally, the year for Yuuri's entries is calculated to the imperial era, so this means 1899 is the 32nd year of Emperor Meiji's reign. (We are currently in Heisei 31, for the record, and will begin a new era when Emperor Akihito steps down this year.)
> 
> Oxford: A lot of young Japanese men (and women) were sent abroad for their studies during Meiji Japan, especially to Western countries like the US and the UK. They would learn about Western institutions and ideas and return to implement them in Japan, contributing to the rapid Westernisation of the country (especially as the refusal to assimilate/modernise would result in foreign imperialist control ala China)! 
> 
> Prince Chulanont of Siam: Films were first screened in Bangkok in 1897, and Prince Thongthaem Sambassatra became one of the first Thai film directors. He is known as the "father of Thai cinema". Additionally, the first Thai cinema was opened by Japanese businessmen, hence Phichit showing up in Tokyo on business.
> 
> Russians and Japanese laws: Many foreigners in Japan at the time were subjected to extraterritoriality, which means they were not held to Japanese laws, and could not be tried in Japanese court. Various countries eventually passed treaties with Japan ending the practice (notably: the British in 1894, which Mary Crawford Fraser's husband Hugh negotiated), including Russia's in 1895. They would take effect [in 1899](https://archive.org/stream/ExtraterritorialityInJapan/Jones-ExtraterritorialityInJapan#page/n82/mode/1up), but at a date after the entry mentioning Viktor's extraterritorial rights. 
> 
> Opium: Reference to the Opium Wars in China at the time.
> 
> Kyosai: Kawanabe Kyosai was a famous traditional Japanese brush painter. An anecdote from Mary Crawford Fraser's letters mentions how one time he was at an inn, got drunk, and drew all over the walls. The manager was very upset until she realised he was Kyosai, and encouraged him to draw more from there on! That's my headcanon for how Yu-Topia got a Kyosai mural haha
> 
> Manchuria/Trans-Siberian Railway: Causes of the Russo-Japanese War. Japan was worried that Russia had expansionist plans by building that railway, so they whooped Russia's ass in 1904. 
> 
> British Minister: ...Actually, Ernest Satow himself! His journal mentioned he was leaving for the country from Tokyo a couple days after Yuuri's entry.
> 
> Fireflies: Reference to Mary Crawford Fraser's letters, where she bought an entire cage of fireflies and released them.
> 
> Exposition Universelle: The Paris Exposition in 1900 did indeed showcase Japanese art, as well as the first 'talkie' films! 
> 
> China rebelling: The Boxer Rebellion in 1899-1901.
> 
> Alliance with the English: The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, negotiated by Ernest Satow.
> 
> Ukiyo-e versus uki-e: Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art characterised by woodblock prints and paintings. Uki-e is Ukiyo-e but with Western art elements such as perspective added in.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [Scream about YOI with me on Tumblr!](https://omgkatsudonplease.tumblr.com)


End file.
